When I worked in the national and NSW ecumenical council offices in Sydney, I once had a close colleague who had previously been employed in HR departments for big business. He was a lively contributor to our shared endeavours but it took him a while to become used to office email and conversational exchange. ‘I just can’t get my head round all of this’, he said one day, ‘people keep signing off with ‘best wishes’ and ‘blessings’ and say ‘thankyou’ for all kinds of simple things. I am being disoriented by kindness.’ Now my friend may have had a particular bleak earlier work experience. Many secular workplaces have very positive atmospheres as well as respectful staff protocols. Christian workplaces can also be full of unstated, and sometimes open, hostilities and negative undercurrents. The ecumenical office we worked in certainly had its mix of all of that! Yet it is true to say that, where human beings are intentional about giving thanks and sharing praise, a positive spirit surely develops. Even when we do not feel particularly thankful or gracious, such practice can transform us and others. Our parish stewardship and thanksgiving developments this year have certainly helped us on the way to being a more thankful community. They have also made us more capable of responding to our diocesan call to grow in faith and generosity. It has been wonderful to see how so many people have responded positively to the challenge to consider how to become more open to God’s love and share our particular blessings with others. Even those who have been a bit nervous about considering the financial and other implications seem to be have been at least touched by this life-renewing spirit of consideration. May this long continue to grow and flourish among us! What highlights will we take forward from our stewardship and thanksgiving initiative this year? For many the Thanksgiving Festival in August was certainly a huge delight. On the Saturday we shared a wonderful community day at St Luke’s, with food, music, children’s activities, chalk drawings and a welcome for all, including to several visitors. It was indeed a lovely example of what we can do to use the St Luke’s site as a ‘Minster’, sharing blessings for all. Then, in the evening, we had a terrific parish meal together, with great food prepared by our generous cooks and a feast of music from Robin and his band. ‘We must do this again’, was the feeling of many. Thanksgiving is infectious!
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This Saturday, at 10 am in St Luke’s, a special event will mark the anniversary of the Battle of One Tree Hill (Table Top Mountain) between local Aboriginal people and early European settlers. The organisers hope it will enable us to learn more of our shared history and thus move forward with greater understanding and a stronger commitment to a better future. For at the heart of Reconciliation of all kinds is a recognition of the truth of our past and present and a transformation of hurtful memories into purposeful new life.
An Anglican bishop once termed the dispossession of Indigenous people ‘Australia’s Original Sin’. He was saying that unless deep uncomfortable truths are faced we can never fully receive the grace of new beginnings. For this works on social as well as personal levels. Whether as individuals, communities or nations, all of us fall short of the glory of God. When we acknowledge our brokenness however, healing can come. For, as the great El Salvadorean Oscar Romero put it, the task of the church in every generation involves helping to make the history of every nation a history of salvation. May God continue to bless us in this journey. It is great to see the final - sacred jigsaw puzzle? - stage of our Toowoomba City Labyrinth coming together at this time in the grounds of St Luke's. We hope it will be ready for our Carnival of Flowers displays, focusing appropriately on being a pilgrim, and we are planning for a city launch on Sunday 11 October. Like ourselves, it is a reminder that we are always 'works in progress'. Last weekend, over three nights, our worship centre at All Saints in Arthur Street hosted a series of open-air movies under the stars, together with a barbeque and other refreshments. Particularly at the 6.30 pm 'family' showing, a good audience was present, enjoying Up, Lion King and Toy Story 3. We hope this may be a regular feature, maybe twice a year, as we enable All Saints to develop its life and ministry to the community. All Saints is in some ways like a platypus: it easily goes unnoticed. Changes of time, activity and orientation at our other two parish worship centres has also seen it drift somewhat, especially after its regular members declined to make any time and worship changes in the 2013 parish review. For the 8 am regular worship time has clashed with the much bigger centre of St Luke's and there has been no clear focus for the future. With considerable faith and courage, All Saints congregation has however now launched themselves into a new time slot - 4.30 pm on a Sunday - and begun establishing new links and a refreshed profile for its surrounding community. Its hall is now certainly well-used during the week. It offers hospitality to both the Toowoomba Coptic and Greek Orthodox worshipping communities and it is a delightful setting for a wedding. Time will tell but we had a very encouraging gathering for worship at the first 4.30 pm service last week. Led by its current dynamic centre wardens, we hope it can therefore continue to claim its growing identity as 'Toowoomba's Village Church'. Sheer drama is one of the most significant aspects of historic Christianity's marking of Holy Week. To share in it is to share in a mighty eternal stage-play. This is no mere re-enactment of events long ago, as if the Church were an ecclesiastical form of the Sealed Knot. Instead, appropriately engaged with, it is a re-membering and re-imagining of love's ultimacy in the face of the forces of human abuse, deceit and betrayal. Theologically speaking, as a drama to enter into, Holy Week is a powerful confirmation that it is not us who find or save ourselves and our world. Rather it is God, the ultimate power of love, who does the work and turns the world upside down. The call and challenge to the Church in any age is to help make this drama live in any context. This year, Holy Week in the parish of St Luke Toowoomba began with a wonderful celebration of Palm Sunday, with a delightful blessing of palms around our soon-to-be-completed labyrinth, a lively procession, dancers from our Living Dance school partners, a loving celebration of communion, and joyful singing from one of The Glennie School's choirs. Perhaps the most powerful part of our gathering however was the dramatic presentation at the heart of our Ministry of the Word. Instead of a reading of the lengthy Passion Gospel, and a brief address, several parish members each took a key role (money-changer, Simon Peter, Pilate, Mary Magdalene etc) and told their own story of what they had seen, felt and experienced in Jesus last days. This spoke wonderfully to everyone as it brought the story, and the whole liturgy of Holy Week, alive in new ways. It was an encouragement to us all to continue to look at how we stage, dramatise, and enflesh the Gospel at all times, as well as a beautiful journey into the great tragi-comedy (in the deepest sense) of Holy Week. One of the most enjoyable recent new initiatives in the contemporary Western mainstream Church has been the phenomenon known as Messy Church. 'A way of being church for families involving fun', this Christ-centred approach to gathering together works for all ages, bringing together 'creativity, hospitality and celebration'. As such, it has been highly successful across the world in a multiplicity of different contexts and church traditions. In the Anglican parish of St Luke, Toowoomba, it is has certainly proven its worth. Introduced at Pentecost 2014, a wonderful lay team has helped to run it at St Mark's, Rangeville on a bi-monthly one Sunday afternoon basis, contributing substantially to the building up of our Christian community as well as growing new families and individual disciples in our midst. The latest themed Messy Church even included the creating of a parish ark (see left after its transfer to St Luke's church building). In some ways, the very term 'Messy Church' is very appropriate for being a Christian community at all in our contemporary Christian world, especially for Anglicans. In every age, after all, the Church has always had to work at what it means, in any context, to 'sight, sound, signal and support' the coming of God's loving reign. Perennially the Church has to allow the grace of God to reshape it afresh. Today however the challenge is particularly pressing, not least because of the pace of change and the sheer diversity of the contemporary world. To be true to the Gospel therefore, contemporary Christianity needs to be highly protean, as well as ever more deeply focused in essentials. It is a messy business! For Anglicans, in theory at least, this should really not be such a difficulty. Anglican history, polity and spirituality form a clear, distinctive and coherent embodiment of Christian life and thought. Yet such elements have formed a worldwide communion which is in many ways highly messy. This certainly does not justify some of the more chaotic and problematic aspects of Anglicanism! Perhaps however the example of Messy Church should be encouragement to Anglicans across the world. Being messy may not suit those of more fundamentalist outlook, whether religious or secularist. Yet Anglican gifts of 'creativity, hospitality and celebration', developed through shared commitment, with some clear but flexible structures, are vital ones for human, and environmental, flourishing today. It was a delight last Sunday evening to see again Brothers Ghislain, Matthew and Alois (the Prior) from the Taize Community and even more delightful to take some of our parishioners and boarders from The Glennie School to share in Taize Prayer in St Stephen's Cathedral in Brisbane. This followed on from our beautiful Taize-style Candlemas Prayer the previous Sunday in St Luke's Toowoomba. This year is the 75th anniversary of the founding of the remarkable Community in the little village of Taize in Burgundy, 100 years on also from the birth of the founder Brother Roger. It continues to act as an inspiration to so many people in so many places and situations in our world. Above all, its Christ-centred spirit of simplicity, solidarity and celebration speaks to young people who continue to join in 'the Pilgrimage of Trust' in such great numbers. The special Letter in preparation for this year's anniversaries is again a beautiful distillation of the Taize spirit and an encouragement to us all to walk together 'Towards a New Solidarity' with people of all Christian, ethnic and other backgrounds, with people of all faiths and none. Check our the Letter here. Later this afternoon I am leading the 'Silence for Peace' community meditation group which emerged out of the Toowoomba inter-faith and community meditation sharing and workshop event I helped organise earlier this year. The group - an idea of an increasingly good friend and wonderful inspiration Jo Anderson - was something I was eager to help create. It meets each week on Tuesdays at 5.30 pm at TRAMS (Toowoomba Refugee and Migrant Services) and has proven a delightful opportunity for many people of many different backgrounds to come together to deepen their sense of peace, silence and relationship with one another. Jo usually leads it beautifully but occasionally Penny and I help out. Tonight Jo is headed to Brisbane, partly to attend a session with Fr Laurence Freeman, who heads up the World Community of Christian Meditation. This body continues to grow and our own parish Christian meditation group (which meets at St Luke's, in the Parish Ministry Centre, each Wednesday at 5 pm) is an affiliate member. For myself, this practice has become an essential part of my life and well-being over the last six years or so. It owes so much to Fr John Main, the founder of the World Community of Christian Meditation, who helped revive the ancient practice of Christian Meditation, picking up the apostolic tradition taken up by the desert monastics and articulated by John Cassian. Today that tradition gives fresh life to Christians all across the world and, as in Toowoomba, to others of many faiths and none, in growing relationships of spirit together. A remarkable thing is happening today. People of many different backgrounds are rediscovering the importance of gratefulness – giving thanks for the simple gifts of our lives. For giving thanks is a major source of happiness, even when things are really tough. Educationalists, workplace advisers, Oprah Winfrey, and many others, have found this for themselves and are commending this to others in their work. Oprah, for instance, has kept a journal for many years, in which, each day, she writes down five things for which she has been grateful. Others have tried this for a set number of days, like the Australian workplace guru Toni Powell with her 30 Day Challenge. For as we record those things which bring us strength and joy, we notice better those aspects of our lives which bring us happiness and we appreciate better the kindnesses and care of others. This is something which the world’s great wisdom traditions have always known, not least the Christian tradition, with its emphasis on appreciating the gifts of God born among us. So why not try a new way of approaching Christmas this year? For as we prepare for Christmas, we are often stressed about buying material gifts. Sometimes this can actually make us less grateful for the gifts of life and others around us! Perhaps what is really needed is not so much sharing special material gifts as appreciating the simple everyday gifts of life and one another. Why not then join with the Anglican Parish of St Luke Toowoomba in using the time before Christmas as a ‘season of gratefulness’? One way to do this is by using a Gratefulness Advent Calendar. It is easy to make one, or use an ordinary calendar for the month of December. What you do need are 25 boxes or spaces, one each for the first 25 days of December. These make up an Advent Calendar to help us cultivate gratefulness at this time. Each day of December, then fill in a box with 3-5 things, people, moments, or events which have brought you strength or joy (anything from the beauty of a flower or shaft of light, to the joy of a bird or animal, to an achievement or good coffee, video, book or meal, to the kindness or care of someone for you or others in trouble, or something heart-warming in the news). Maybe, if you write down a person’s name, you will also find a way to give thanks to them personally in a special way? Try this for the 25 days to Christmas and see what a difference it makes… Check out our Blog at http://stluketmba.wordpress.com and the Network for Grateful Living website at www.gratefulness.org Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (I Thessalonians 5.16-18) To rework a common saying, if something doesn't quite look or quack like a duck, perhaps it is not a duck. There are no doubt many reasons why the Anglican Parish of St Luke has not always flourished as well as it might have done. Yet key may the very identity of its principal worship site (St Luke’s). This is situated on two major city thoroughfares of Ruthven Street (the main north-south route through Toowoomba) and Herries Street (which links key city institutions such St Vincent Hospital & Toowoomba Grammar School with The Glennie School). It faces the City Council chambers which are mere yards away diagonally. It has traditionally hosted many wider civic and city events. Local people outside the church congregation also frequently and instinctively call St. Luke’s a Cathedral. Yet its city centre significance and ‘more than ordinary parish’ identity has not always been well grasped. Linked with other worship centres with different dynamics, it has felt further dislocating pulls of theological, pastoral and missional orientation. As Toowoomba grows each day towards being a genuine regional capital, and as the wider Church wrestles with today’s mission priorities, it is therefore appropriate to ask: ‘is it time for the St Luke’s site to be regarded, supported and developed as a form of Minster?... |
AuthorJo Inkpin is an Anglican priest serving as Minister of Pitt St Uniting Church in Sydney, a trans woman, theologian & justice activist. These are some of my reflections on life, spirit, and the search for peace, justice & sustainable creation. Archives
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